The Fighter

Directed by David O Russell. Starring Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Melissa Leo, Jack McGee, Melissa McMeekin 15A cert, gen release, 115 min

The Fighter is a predictable but punishingly effective drama, writes DONALD CLARKE

IS THERE ANY micro-genre as limited in its plots as the fight picture? To say that The Fighterfeels familiar is to understate the case. This giddily enjoyable true story has a different smell – ranker, saltier, mustier — to that of Cinderella Man, Rockyand The Champ, but the story is similar. A bruised fighter, past his prime, gets one last chance at the title. Jockeying forces threaten to knock him off course, but somehow, assisted by the love of a good woman, he makes it to the final bout with his pride intact. In comparison, the Petrarchan sonnet feels positively free-form.

The news that David O Russell, director of the impressive Three Kingsand the unwatchable (though original) I Heart Huckabees, is behind the camera promises an innovative take on the creaky formula. The result is a strange class of hybrid. Occasionally funky in the style of John Cassavetes, elsewhere broader than George Foreman's head, The Fightercan't quite decide to take an orthodox or a southpaw stance. Never mind. It packs a pretty mean punch in both positions.

Mark Wahlberg is at his modest best when playing a hard man pressed down by unkind circumstance. Meet “Irish” Mickey Ward. Brought up on the hard streets of Lowell, Massachusetts, the boxer is having trouble coping with the smothering attentions of Alice (Melissa Leo), his nicotine-powered mother, and Dicky (Christian Bale), his crack-addled brother.

Both mother and brother have Mickey’s best interests at heart, but seem doomed to make the worst decisions at the worst possible time. When a carefully chosen, only modestly gifted opponent – an ideal rung on the ladder – retires ill on fight day, they urge him to fight another larger, more savage opponent. Mickey gets pummelled into the canvas.

While recuperating, Mickey meets Charlene (Amy Adams), a tough barmaid, and is gradually persuaded to put Alice and Dicky at arm’s length. The tough family are, not surprisingly, unhappy about Charlene’s influence. Sparks and beer glasses fly.

Russell's experimental impulses show through in the boxing sequences. Foreswearing the careful choreography of Rockyand Cinderella Man(and Raging Bull, for that matter), the director films the important fights in the messy, unstructured style of television sports footage. The viewer loses some sense of who's doing what to whom, but the increased verisimilitude pays compensatory dividends.

The dramatic sequences are somewhat more worrying. Leo and Bale have won awards for their performances (and are odds-on favourites for Oscars), but, hugely impressive as the turns are, you could not call them in the least bit subtle. If Harry Enfield essayed a skit on blue-collar Irish America, it might look a little like this.

Accompanied by a huge brood of hair-sprayed harpies – Mickey’s cigaretting sisters – Leo’s Alice spits and storms through the picture with all the nuanced grace of a burning tank. The Irish-American lobby will, surely, have mixed feelings about the project.

What of Bale? Playing the hometown hero, who once knocked down Sugar Ray Leonard, the actor, slimmed down to a veined reed, twitches, fidgets and shudders with lunatic enthusiasm. The character is hugely annoying, which is surely the point. The viewer feels the same guilty irritation that accompanies attempts to escape a hopped-up pan-handler. It’s certainly a powerful performance, though not one you’d want to watch again any time soon.

Yet for all its deficiencies, The Fighterremains a gripping slice of hammer-fisted, sweat-drenched popular cinema. Indeed, it is one of those films whose flaws – notably that blackly overheated family portrait – somewhat add to the viewing pleasure. Just don't go expecting delicacy or sensitivity.